Eleanor Holmes Norton: “We've had to come to this floor, Mr. Speaker, to speak about the folks who drove this economy into the ground and just…”

“We've had to come to this floor, Mr. Speaker, to speak about the folks who drove this economy into the ground and just how bad it was, but there is good news to raise the spirits of the American people coming from the Labor Department and from analysts. We know that the economy has turned around, but until the job market turned around nobody wanted to hear it; now analysts tell us so has the job market. All expected unemployment numbers to ratchet up during February because of the bad weather, including crippling snowstorms. Instead, it stood steady--too high at over 9 percent, but it showed confidence in the economy that so many employers stopped laying off people and kept people on. The biggest losses were where you might have expected, in construction, because of all the bad weather and the snowstorms. The best sign that employers are feeling more confident is that they are getting their feet wet with many new temporary employees brought on, which is always the first sign that they are ready to bring on people full time and permanently, and the best sign may be the 2.7 million job openings. Now we have a mismatch. Thank goodness for the stimulus that went to community colleges to help us cure that mismatch.”